Songs of the Week: Tommy & Roy, William Hut, Frances Luke Accord & More
The latest edition runs the gamut, from indie-folk to gooey pop music.
Welcome to Songs of the Week, a running series with new selections.
Music can save and it can heal. It can carry you from the darkest and most ravaging of storms to the other side. On the other side, there lies hope and forgiveness and hope. It’s the hope we must clutch on the most; and thankfully, we have music as a life preserver in days of uncertainty. Below, you’ll find songs that will move you beyond belief, so let’s plunge into the watery depths.
Tommy & Roy – “High on Nightmares”
Possessing a DIY spirit, indie-pop duo Tommy & Roy fuel a frighteningly high-octane kaleidoscopic disco party with “High on Nightmares.” The funk never stops, swirled together in the accompanying visual that spins with skulls and swooping pumpkins. A haunted house pops up into view, and the pair invite you deeper into their cursed psyche with abandon. With the help of creative consultant Yana Grace, Tommy and Roy let their dark-hearted spirits fly through a glistening, disturbing, and whimsical picture-scape. It’s the kind of video that immerses you, pulls you under, and never lets you go.
William Hut – “Don’t Give Up”
William Hut claims he’s “nothing special,” but his new single “Don’t Give Up” would beg to differ. Over harmoniously production, slick and tingly to the touch, the singer-songwriter extends a comforting hand, as he’s weathered the worst life has to offer and lived to tell the tale. “At the core of a dream, where nothing’s what it seems, I’ve lost control of my inner strife / And I’ve been scared all my life,” he chirps with surprising calm. The melody washes over you, slapping the eardrums with sunny waves. There’s a crispness to the arrangement that invites you forward, and you step into its gentle rays. And it warms you down to the soul.
Lawson Hull – “Canada ’17”
The road seemed to pound beneath them. From the Colorado Rockies to Vancouver, Lawson Hull traveled with his wife Rhianna, zipping through one of the best experiences of his life. “I’d do anything to go back now,” he waxes wistful. The past zooms through his head like flashes of photography. Polaroids tumble to the ground, only to vanish into dust day by day. “Hearts on fire / Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Lawson sings. That fire of living life courses in their veins and almost seems suffocating yet freeing. Guitar ebbs and flows with percussive elements tip-toeing around Lawson’s delicate vocal. It’s a surprisingly invigorating performance.
With each passing year, you grow more accepting of the past. Whether you’re turning 30 or 50 or 70, there’s a wisdom that comes with age and an understanding that what came before folds into your skin and makes you who you are. With “Afterglow,” Portair, 30, reflects back upon the “definitive” years, he says, of his early 20s. Piano twinkles, setting the tone for one of the year’s most moving ballads. “I’ve made peace with losing you / If I say it out loud, will it make it true?” he asks with a tinge of sorrow on his breath. He continues, waxing wistful, “I was cheated of my youth / Cause everything most too fast so soon.” A collaboration with WYNNE, there’s a coldness seeping out of the melody that strikes the listener to their core. It’s the kind of existential musing that is just inescapable.
Half Gringa – “No Kind of Fire”
We’re all in crisis to some degree. We all have pain, and we’re all clawing to understand who we’ve become. Reflecting upon the past, Half Gringa‘s “No Kind of Fire” sifts through the rubble of self to collect up the shards that we’ve perhaps once forgotten entirely or misremembered as vital to the blood coursing in our veins. “If I shot an arrow into a heap of bleached bones, would you feel better?” she provokes over a guitar’s thorny chords. She meanders through the halls of the past, often coming across brutally unforgiving elements. Those bits, she surmises, are cobbled together alongside her backbone, forever tethered to one another. “Is taking hostage necessary?” she ponders. Half Gringa asks a multitude of questions and leaves the listener to find the answers on their own.
Frances Luke Accord – “All the Things”
It’s tough to be hopeful these days. With a catastrophic pandemic, things haven’t been more dire. We all feel isolated, and France Luke Accord are here to remind the listener that a silver lining is only a storm cloud away. “All the Things” bounces with banjo and whistling, extending a hand of compassion and understanding. “Sing me out if I’m lonely, breathe me in if I’m blue / Fill me up if I’m hollow / Break me down if I’m through,” the band sings. There’s an immediate and intense sense of calm that soaks over the listener. It’s both lyrically piercing and melodically soothing, as though the indie-folk duo are on a mission to the ends of the earth to save humanity. And we should let them. Their music is irrefutable a salve in such trying times. It could very well save us, or at least give us a distraction and a sliver of hope.
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